ON MATTERS OF DUBIOUS INTEREST
The stage is now populated by Trump’s insane tariff scheme. Its advocates proclaim grand consequences, while Democrats yammer about adopting populist economics and finding a leader. In the back row of the theater two old Greenies, thus far silent, rise to point out the madness of ignoring climate change.
Climate math: What a 1.5-degree pathway would take How McKinsey Destroyed the Middle Class Op-Ed: The McKinsey I hope the world gets to know Do we really have any chance to come to grips with climate change? Like many of us, I go back and forth on that one. Some recommend throwing out the whole …
It’s possible that Trump doesn’t actually know what climate change is Donald Trump’s New York Times Interview: Full Transcript Trump says climate change not a hoax, not sure of its source If we had better criteria for impeachment, the president’s remarks on climate would form Article One. Yet, after pulling the U.S. out of the …
Elizabeth Warren thinks corruption is why the US hasn’t acted on climate change How One Billionaire Could Keep Three Countries Hooked on Coal for Decades Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ of the Holy Father Francis on Care for Our Common Home We were drinking freshly distilled artisanal martinis at Ralph’s house (he makes his gin from …
Continue reading “Artisanal Martini Wisdom on Climate Change”
The Green New Deal isn’t big enough Climate change will force 120 million people into poverty What I learned writing about climate change and the US south for a year The outlook is full of distressing signs. A climate change blues plays in heavy rotation on our interior Spotify. It echoes the rainstorm that never …
Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement Bill McKibben, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? For many of us, climate change is simply beyond imagining. These two excellent books offer quite different ways of understanding what it is, how the threat grew, and what if anything we can do about it. Ghosh is …
Saving Earth (June 27, 2019) Thirty years later, what needs to change in our approach to climate change (June 26, 2018) Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change (August 1, 2018) Once one of the few scientific voices crying out about climate change, James Hansen has become a renowned, and sometimes vilified, spokesman. …
Continue reading “Hansen’s Recent Thoughts on Climate Change—and Some History”
The First Democratic Debate Failed The Planet The Debates Will Be about Climate—Disguised as Other Issues The Energy 202: Seven minutes were devoted to climate change in the first Democratic debate Last night’s first Democratic debate was just more of the same as it reflected a deliberate disregard of climate on the part of moderators …
Continue reading “Seven Minutes (out of two hours) on Climate Change”
The scariest thing about global warming (and Covid-19) Proving the ‘shifting baselines’ theory: how humans consistently misperceive nature David Roberts opens his impressive Vox piece this way: We lost 2,800 souls to Covid just last Thursday, more than died on 9/11. Instead of jumping to respond to “an unbearable collective national tragedy,” we adjust mentally …
Continue reading “Climate Amnesia: How We Misperceive Chaos and Change”
It’s not easy to imagine the mental state of climate deniers these days. The magnitude of recent fires, floods, storms, ocean warming, melting ice, intolerable heat, collapsing ecosystems (what have I forgotten?) has affected almost everyone on this globe. The deniers can no longer address these events as natural or normal. How people bear with …
The discussion on how to control the out-of-control climate has always seemed to me somehow out of whack. Climate doctors invariably focus on changing our energy sources, but pay little attention to how to cool this rapidly overheating planet. And that is the presenting problem. Dr. David Keith, a professor of applied physics and of …